


On my Breath

by IAmInTwelve



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s09e11 Heaven Sent, F/M, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 00:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7459246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmInTwelve/pseuds/IAmInTwelve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate take on Heaven Sent, from Clara's point-of-view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Love, Love is a verb_

_Love is a doing word …_

_Fearless on my breath …_

She floated in Space, the Impossible Girl, _his_ Impossible Girl, the song playing in her helmet, softly. The Universe turned around her in a graceful arc, tracing luminous outlines of stars, exploding nebulae, and the vast vacuum that was now a part of her. She floated on an unseen sea, her eyes taking in a spectrum of colors she could never have imagined perceiving when she was a human. Being immortal, or very nearly so, had made her acutely aware of a world beyond the normal limits of human perception. Time had compressed around her to a single moment between two heartbeats, and Space had opened up her awareness, her attention to the Universe.

All around her, the Universe continued to go about its daily existence, if a 'day' meant something here, in this Void. She wondered what a cosmic time line could even be, how it would manifest itself, how the ebbs and flows of Space would beat their drums upon the thinly stretched parchment of Time. She felt like the microscopic bacteria living on a glacier – could she even fathom the depth or the movement of the Universe? She remembered an article she had picked up at Coal Hill Elementary that stated that only **0.000003%** of the Milky Way was visible to humans from Earth. She remembered the field trips, the feeling of awe as many of the city-dwelling students caught a glimpse of the Milky Way for the first time.

She had never thought about the Universe, or the Milky Way, for that matter when she was living. But now, when her entire future lifetime consisted of moments stolen between two arbitrary bookends, two beats of an average human heart, she found the scales of Space and Time reversing. She was floating in an endless Universe.

 _No, not 'endless,'_ she thought. It implied a beginning, and eventually, an end, however far it may be for her mind to grasp. _No, not endless, but eternal. Eternal, immortal._

Immortal. Her thoughts turned to her companion, Lady Me, who was watching the spectacular show from within the TARDIS. _No, that was not right_ _too_ _,_ she thought. There could only be one TARDIS, _the_ TARDIS, _his_ TARDIS. Everything else was … not-TARDIS… just a spaceship, a bubble, a doorway. It was silly really, and had made for a very confusing few days initially, when they referred to the TARDISes using the same word – until they finally agreed on a scheme – his was the Box, and theirs was the Diner. That made sense, she thought, amused. She wondered what he would say if he knew that she had deliberately tampered with the chameleon circuit in her TARDIS, permanently setting the exterior to the Diner. _The Police Box and the Diner_ , she thought. _You will always answer a call for help, Doctor_ _._ _.. and I will always answer your call_ _for a place to_ _rest. F_ _or a place to call Home._

_Gentle impulsion, shakes me, make me lighter..._

_Fearless on my breath …_

The thump of regular beats in her ears was a reminder of her missing pulse, her life suspended between one heartbeat and the next, her last. She looked around, searching for the Diner. It took her a few moments to locate it, the neon sign on the front flashing against the pitch black of nothingness. She had drifted away, more than she had expected. She crouched into a fetal position, facing the Diner, and shot out in its direction by swiftly extending her legs in the other direction.

 _They were wrong_ , she thought as she sped towards the door, now held open by her companion, _all of them_. Only Aristotle (bless his soul, what a beard!) had been right. Nothing was truly in vacuum, not even vacuum itself. Even the nothingness, the pitch black Space, the ever stationary Time – they were never truly alone. Here, in the darkness of Eternity, her feet pushed against the stray atoms that floated around her, and the Universe pushed her back, gently. It was just like a deep-sea swim, her legs propelling her forward. _Like a frog._

That thought made her giggle.

“I would hardly find this amusing,” a stern yet benevolent voice crackled in her helmet, cutting off the song. “You went even further this time. Clara, if I did not know already, I would say that you are getting reckless.”

She had taken to doing the spacewalks untethered, not bound to the Diner in any way. Humans, well, _living_ humans, needed oxygen to breathe, to keep their hearts beating. She did not. Her suit was therefore very simple, very streamlined, no tubes or rappelling hooks from the outside. She could go further out this way, explore places that the Diner could not get into.

As she went through the TARDIS' atmospheric shield, she found her velocity slowing, the air cushion dragging her to a stop. She guided her landing towards a platform that led to the door of the Diner. The platform was her addition, it also served as a parking lot for customers when they landed on a new planet. She was out of the suit even before she landed, the suit uncomfortable though it was, was a necessity. Her frail body would not survive the open Space. Her feet touched the cold tarmac and she sighed involuntarily.

Lady Me was still standing in the doorway, an eyebrow arching upwards like a question that she was expected to answer.

“Oh come on Me! It was just a bit of fun.” She walked past her companion and placed her helmet and suit on the nearest table. “Not like something is going to kill me _here_ , anyways.”

Lady Me's face changed abruptly at the last remark. The stern countenance was replaced by something softer, much deeper, infinitely sadder. Her death, a _fixed point_ in Time, as he would say. Nothing could alter it – it had already happened, on Trap Street.

“Is that why you are still so reckless?” Me asked the retreating figure as Clara went into the kitchen to get a glass of lemonade. “Is that why you are never careful? There are worse things than death, you know? Ask me, and I could tell you.”

She stopped halfway while filling her glass. Me was standing across her now, and in her eyes, Clara detected the faintest hint of … fear? Fondness? She looked into the eyes of the Immortal, and found them searching back into hers. She remembered his words -

_Immortality isn’t living forever. That’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying._

Around them, the song continued through the PA system.

  


_Teardrop on the fire_

_Fearless on my breath..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara sees something familiar in a quite unfamiliar setting.

This was always the hardest part for her – coming back to the Diner after a spacewalk. Something tugged at her heartstrings, an indescribable ache that made her feel at home in the Void than in the comforts of her spaceship. Each time she went out, it seemed that she left a part of herself _out there_.

She stepped into the console room, casually drying her hair with a checkered towel – red and white. Lady Me raised her eyebrows at the choice of the towel, but Clara shrugged it off. They could not help it – their TARDIS had chosen to embrace the Diner theme in the interior as well. Me smiled and continued her previous task--observing something important under a microscope. It was probably something they collected at their last stop-the Amber Planet.

_Imagine that_ , Clara thought, _an entire planet made of amber, with all the lifeforms perfectly preserved in it._

She came walking past the console to stand next to Me.

“See something interesting?”

“Can't say. I thought I saw something move in there,” Me pointed to the block of amber they had cut out from a cliff face. “Have to be sure it is not an anomaly, or worse.” She gave Clara a knowing glance, who in response developed a sudden interest in her toenails.

“It wasn't that bad,” she hesitated, then added, “was it?”

“You introduced a magnetically active life-form on a planet where 70% of life was based on ferrite compounds! Almost led us to an extinction event!”

“Saved them all, didn't we?”

“Yes, and by the very breadth of a hair. Yours, I believe.” Me sighed and looked up from her eyepiece. “You are not _him_ , you know? He gets away with it, most of the time, that is. He can afford to.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Clara gave Me a small nod. Me smiled back as rose up from her seat, clearly tired. “I will retire for the night.”

“Do you mind?” Clara motioned to the block of amber.

“Oh no! Please, go for it. Always good to have another pair of eyes look at it.”

Clara made herself comfortable on the chair, raising it a couple of inches. _Lets see what you are,_ she addressed the translucent block peppered with some dark spots. She picked up the amber block and held it against the light coming in from the round windows, turning it around in her hands. The light bounced off the multiple layers in the block in a deliberate, almost sensuous fashion. The layers were not smooth, she realized as a glint of a highlight passed by her eyes. Something went through the layers, breaking their symmetry, their whole, into fragments that were scattered at an almost random fashion.

On a whim, she held the block higher with her right hand, and focused her gaze to the wall on the far side. She was surprised to have guessed rightly—on the far wall, the block cast a translucent shadow that was magnified due to the distance. She turned the block slowly, paying close attention to anything that seemed out of the ordinary.

The image on the wall seemed perfectly normal, an amber-orange hue interspersed with a few dark spots and patches. She blinked as another highlight hit her eyes, turning her head just so slightly to overcome the glare. _This was a big one,_ she observed. _And it seemed to be much more than a glint._

She turned the block in the reverse direction, until she could see what was causing this anomaly, this highlight, somewhat clearly. _There_ , she thought as the shape of the highlight came into view. She let out a gasp when she realized what she was looking at.

Me theorized that the dark spots were in fact living entities; that under the prefect cover of the amber shell, there was a thriving society of microscopic organisms who could survive and replicate without an atmosphere to sustain. Without air, without oxygen. _Just like me,_ she smirked. She was hardly a scientist, but even an English Lit teacher could recognize irony when it was right in her face.

She put the block on the observation pad, aligning it to give her the best view of the highlight. She adjusted the focus of the eyepiece and started her search for the anomaly. She felt a rush of excitement as the inner layers came into view, crisp, in-focus than the blurry projection on the wall. Running along the length of the block, between the layers of frozen amber, were channels, like veins in a body.

She studied the intricate tapestry for a few moments, taking in the beauty and complexity of the network of tunnels. Her first guess was that they were conduits for some type of gas that had escaped from the strata, like the ones you could observe in ice. She zoomed in on a particular set, and observed that the channels were minute, microscopic, but smooth enough to not be discounted as a random, wholly natural phenomenon. _This_ , she realized with growing excitement, _was a network of tunnels that had been constructed, dug out with a purpose, from the amber substrate_.

The next task on hand was therefore determining if whatever created this intricate lattice was still inhabiting the block. She punched a few keys on the keyboard and changed the visual to infra-red—a living organism would most probably register with a heat signature. Unless it was absolutely cold-blooded, but she hoped it would not be so. Her hopes were answered as the image on the eyepiece refreshed with the new parameters—gone was the image of a solid orangey block. In its place was a collection of red dots, blinking, pulsing with the energy of Life.

_Oh Me, you will love this,_ she thought with excitement, as she zoomed further to follow one of the blinking red dots. The dots were not particularly mobile, she realized, which meant that they were still engaged in the act of digging out the tunnels. _What are you?_ She asked a red dot on her eyepiece. _And why are you so busy, tunneling out from the very planet that shelters you, that is your home?_

She picked a dot at random, and decided to follow it. After half-an-hour or so, she was ready to give up because she was unable to detect any pattern in its movement. _Better to go back to the original view, at least it offered some color_. She started turning the dial, but stopped halfway through the transition. The creatures she had been studying were completely transparent, which is why she could not see them earlier. But combining the infra-red image with the normal image gave her a better visual to analyze.

She was surprised to see that the channels were not random at all, but were clustered together in groups. Channels in the same group, she further observed, were oriented in the same direction. As if the creatures in one group started from different locations, but were moving towards a common destination.

_Why are you going there,_ she asked the minute organisms. _Is it a family reunion_ (she shuddered), _or are you planning to meet friends_? _What is driving you to go where you are going, and how do you even know where to go? How long do you think it is going to take you to get there?_

The last question, she knew, she could answer. She chose a group that was closest to her, extracted their path data, punched a few calculations into the console, and waited to receive the answer. _Not sciencey enough indeed,_ she knew Osgood would be proud of her, though most of this stuff she had only picked up indirectly from Lady Me. Lady Me was the scientist, she was just … having adventures.

The creatures continued their digging, as the Diner continued working on its calculations. Clara thought of having a coffee while the results arrived, and was just about to proceed to the kitchen, when the console came alive with a loud 'ding.'

She hastened over to the screen and turned it towards her. Her smile was quickly replaced by an expression of surprise, and later, horror, as she read the text offered to her.

>> Time to completion: 4.5 billion years

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a slow-burner, please bear with me. I had to give Clara a valid reason to choose her actions, hence the setup. 
> 
> Hope you like it :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara and Me discuss the intricacies of Space-Time.

The Diner was quiet, save the thrumming from the TARDIS engines. Clara had not slept a wink – she did not technically need to, but she nonetheless gave her body some rest every now and then. Tonight had been an exception. She was seated in one of the two plush chairs that made up the furniture in the library. A stack of unopened books lay to her right, and around her, spread open in various degrees, lay texts, maps, manuscripts, e-books, aging tomes and a lone blackboard filled with her handwriting. She had spent the past three hours working meticulously through the material, in vain.  
  
It was almost there, right in front of her, she thought as she stared at a point infinitely away, her fingers locked together, and both thumbs resting under her teeth.

 _Like a wind that teases on my fingertips, never revealing itself_ _fully_.

“A bit late for you to get a college degree isn't it?” Lady Me remarked as she walked into the library. She picked a book from the top of the stack and ran a gaze over the title, turning it over a couple of times. “In Physics? Astronomy?” she smirked, “No offense girl, but that's not your area, is it?” Lady Me flipped the book to the side and settled into the only other chair in the room, right opposite Clara. Her smirk vanished when she saw the expression on Clara's face.

“It's there... right … there” Clara had not heard a word she had spoken.

“What is?”

“Tell me.” Clara remarked, turning her head to Me as if suddenly aware of her presence. “Tell me again.”

Clara moved aside a couple of maps, books and picked up the amber block. She had moved to the edge of her chair, holding the block in both hands.

“It's a prismatic terrestrial organism, or _Formicae Invisibilia_ , as thoroughly documented by Charles Darwin, but I stole the notes from him.” she smiled. “This is the first I have encountered in the wild. They are generally...”

“No,” Clara interrupted her softly, but urgently. “Tell me about... space... and time... and lives.”

“Well,” Lady Me began, “On Earth, Albert Einstein postulated that Space and Time were not independent phenomena, but were related, interwoven... like threads in a tapestry. Space influenced Time via gravity, and Time responded via electromagnetic radiation, or light. Hence, for a long long time, the speed of light was assumed to be a fundamental constant in the Universe. Now, however, we know that is not true. We can not only move forwards and backwards in Time, but also treat it as a space and move laterally, jumping Universes, or alternatives, each occurring on exactly the same space-time point.” She added with a laugh, “It's like hopscotch, only a lot cooler.”

“And lives…?” Clara's voice was a near whisper as she looked in her companion's direction.

“That is where it gets tricky.” Lady Me stood up and walked to the blackboard. She turned it over to reveal a blank side and drew a kite-like shape. “Here, let us see if this helps. If we were the _Boneless_ , the Flatliners, our world be this rectangle here- limited only to the two dimensions that we could perceive.” She looked at Clara who nodded absently, her eyes fixed on the board, her fingers holding the amber block.

“If we add Time as another dimension on top of this 2D Space, every moment of Time is a slice of a layer cake, infinitely high. Just like a solid block of amber.” she pointed to the block in Clara's hands.

Clara nodded yet again, and added, “And … lives?”

“Every life that has ever lived, would be a path, a linear curve, a 'world-line' that ran through this block like a vein through a cheese, or a tunnel through… an amber block? Our lives, for example, would start at vastly different points in the layers, but they would meet, first in the Viking village, then on Gallifrey, then in Utah, and they have been parallel since then. If however, we were to separate, then our paths, the tunnels, would diverge until we could possibly meet again.” Lady Me's voice acquired an inquisitive edge as she realized what Clara was trying to understand.

She walked over to Clara and kneeled down in front of her. Her hands closed around Clara's, and Clara softened her grip on the block slightly. Lady Me looked into Clara's hazel eyes, trying to fathom what she had in her mind.

“Now, you tell me...” she asked Clara, softly.

“Our lives… _my_ life… is that a predetermined path?” Clara spoke with a deliberate emphasis on each word. “Is it just a tunnel through a block, that I am destined to follow, or can I make my own?”

“It is predetermined,” Lady Me lowered her eyes to the floor. “We follow the path that takes us through our lives, but we cannot forge new ones, not without rupturing the spacetime continuum… the amber, around us.”

“But it is possible?”

“No, no Clara,” Lady Me leaned closer to her. “You must not think about something like this, let alone attempt to do it.” She added in a lower voice, “It is forbidden, even to an immortal.”

“Forbidden does not mean impossible, does it? Does it?” Clara added, the plea in her voice now evident.

Lady Me did not answer. They sat for a few moments, as still as their own lives.

It was Lady Me who spoke, in a soft whisper. “My children, my family, my loved ones, I lost them all – again and again. In the Great Plague, at Pompeii, in San Francisco, in Shaanxi, in Constantinople, in …. I have given this a thought, a great deal of thought” she exhaled. “What would I do to get back my daughter, all of two years, her body ravaged by the curse of plague? My fifth husband, murdered in cold blood in Rome? My son, dead on the Somme? What do you think I would do to get them back? Get them all back? Death is the price we pay for being alive. You said it yourself – that is the deal.”

Clara gazed back into her companions eyes. Finally Lady Me stood up, and gave her a smile. A special, sad smile as if she was looking into a mirror, and walked out of the library.

Clara watched her leave, and turned her attention to the amber block in her hands. She raised it up against the light and observed the intricate network of tunnels. By now, she had observed the block enough times under the microscope to recognize the local networks. She turned the block around a few times, wanting to confirm what she already knew, but stopped suddenly as she saw a new, unfamiliar, stray glint hit her eyes. She picked out a sonic magnifier from her coat and held the block under it.

 _There,_ she thought with excitement as she confirmed what she knew in her heart. One of these little creatures was cutting away from the group, its path aiming towards another group a few millimeters across.

She rushed into the console room to find Lady Me working on the coordinates of a new destination.

“Intercepted the Judoon frequencies, Prisoner Zero has escaped, again!” Lady Me rolled her eyes. “That bad boy needs to learn how to behave.”

“Scratch that. We are going home.”

Lady Me looked up from her console and found herself facing two of the most steely, determined eyes she had ever seen.

Clara smiled, “We are going to Gallifrey!”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara and Me arrive on Gallifrey

“Are you… are you sure?” Lady Me's voice was barely audible. “Gallifrey?”

They knew what this meant, for both of them. Clara's return to Gallifrey was a return to Trap Street, the final destination on her journey. Clara looked across the console to her companion. Lady Me was looking at her with the same expression as when she came back from the spacewalk. She had to admit, the time they had spent together had made them fond of each other. Lady Me would certainly miss her, she knew.

“But… we… I always… always thought…” Lady Me was finding it increasingly difficult to string a sentence together.

“That we would be together, forever?” Clara completed the thought. Lady Me nodded silently.

“And what makes you think,” Clara added, with a twinkle in her eyes, her lips curling up slightly with mischief, “that it would not be so? We are going to Gallifrey, but not to surrender to the Time Lords, not to return the Diner, not to go back to Trap Street; we are going there – I am going there, for him.” She proceeded to the keyboard and punched in the space-time coordinates. Lady Me came by her side and looked up at the screen. _The space time coordinates were surely incorrect_ , she thought.

They were _a day after_ Trap Street.

“I do not understand…” Lady Me replied, puzzled. “If you set foot on that planet...”

“If I set foot on Gallifrey, the prophecy states that it will ruin the planet. Well, I am guessing, because prophecies usually turn out this way – that the fate of the planet will be far, far worse if _he_ finds out that I am indeed dead - four and a half billion years later...”

“What are you… _we…_ going to do?” Lady Me had found some of her trademark composure, and Clara could see that her mental gears had started turning in the background. Clara gave her another smile, this time a bit more conspiratorial. “We are going to rescue the Doctor from the Confession Dial!” she said as she flipped the landing lever.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

They burst into the High Council chamber, unmindful of the stares they were getting from the guards. One of the guards had tried to stop them, but a meaningful look from Clara in his direction had prompted him to stay in his current place.

 _Of course,_ Lady Me realized. _In their timeline, Clara died yesterday. To them, this person could very well be a ghost. Even Time Lords could be superstitious! You are a genius Clara – this is just what the Doctor would have done._

“Miss Oswald, this certainly is... a surprise...” The booming voice of President Rassilon greeted them as they entered the vast chamber. “And to what do we owe this … pleasure?”

“A serpent should never expect pleasure from its predator, Rassilon.” Clara strode through the aisle and stood face to face with the President of Gallifrey.

Rassilon studied her, carefully. A five feet two woman who came back from the dead, and the most powerful Time Lord who was responsible for it. They stood facing each other, for a few seconds, until Rassilon turned his gaze away in contempt.

“You died,” he spat, although Clara could feel him get a bit disoriented with her sudden presence. “I made sure of it. You died because you thought you were too clever for your own good.”

“I died because I messed up your plans regarding the Doctor.”

“You think I wanted him dead?” Rassilon shot back at her. “Yes I did, but it would not have helped us understand the secret of …” he stopped suddenly, mindful of not saying too much in her company.

“The Hybrid,” Lady Me came forward to join Clara. “You used me and my people to understand the secret of your destruction, the secret of the Hybrid. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

“You died,” Rassilon hissed as he took up his seat once more.

“Yes,” Clara smiled. That same cold smile of fury that had once graced _his_ face. “I died, _yesterday_ , on Trap Street. A fixed point. An immutable event. And you know what this means, don't you?” she walked a few steps to stand over the seated President of Gallifrey.

Rassilon's face clouded over with confusion. He was feeling quite uneasy in her presence. Now, with her standing over his throne, his seat of power, he felt the slightest touch of fear because he realized what she was saying.

“It means that, today,” Clara continued, her voice growing colder with every word. “I. Have. Nothing. To. Lose. Absolutely nothing!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter due to time constraints. Subsequent chapters hopefully in the coming week. Hope you enjoy reading :)  
> Please let me know through comments your thoughts so far...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The workings of a Confession Dial, explained (more or less).

The High Council chamber was silent, eerily silent. The air itself seemed heavy, filled with anticipation, and to some degree, dread. Clara’s words echoed off the vaulted ceiling, flew around the ornate columns, and came back to the atrium like a procession of waves at high tide.

Rassilon, the President of Gallifrey, and one of the most powerful Time Lords, was too busy sweating to reply. It was a General, who first mustered courage to break the silence.

“What do you want, Miss Oswald?” he asked, every word a measured step.

Clara turned around to face the speaker, and it took her a few moments to realize whom she was speaking to. The man who would be killed by the Doctor, _her_ Doctor. Her voice softened just a little bit as she replied tersely, “Free him.”

They all knew whom she was referring to.

“The Doctor,” she added, “he said that he had been … detained … by the High Council, for … a very long time …” She was careful not to reveal too much. The events she was describing were yet in the far future for everybody else. “I have come to rescue him. I have come to ask you to release him. Now.” She looked at the General again. “Before it is too late,” she said, her voice a shade gentler than before.

The High Council chamber erupted into a buzz almost instantly. Clara turned around, carefully observing the participants in the room. Dozens of small conversations were taking place simultaneously as the gathered representatives of Gallifrey tried to make sense of her words.

“But…” the General spoke. He had assumed the mantle of the spokesperson by default. Rassilon was still seated on his throne, silently contemplating the situation. “That is not possible, Miss Oswald. We cannot ...”

“You heard her, General,” Lady Me interjected. “And let me assure you that this time, you will find me on her side.”

“It is not that… not that we do not want to… prolong his … discomfort …” the General was carefully crafting his reply. “But … we cannot… It does not allow us to.”

“Explain,” Clara walked over to an empty seat at the far end of the table, and made herself comfortable. If this was going to take some time, she might as well get her a chair too.

“The Confession Dial, you know what it is?”

“Yes, Missy explained the basic workings of the dial to me.” That name drew a gasp from quite a few members in the room. “It stores the last will and testament of a Time Lord. Sort of a legal document.”

“Not quite…” the General replied nervously. “You see, Miss Oswald, the dial is just an interface, a gateway, a door, like… a TARDIS. It opens into a pocket Universe, a controlled Universe that is designed by … the owner of the dial, in this case, the Doctor himself. The dial is supposed to be a place away from the Universe, the present one, where a Time Lord can reflect upon his life and make peace with his death. Every dial has a distinct Universe to facilitate this process.”

“And? Surely you can communicate with the Doctor in that Universe? You can get him out?”

“Not quite. It is not as straightforward as that.”

Clara raised her eyebrow.

“Only the owner of the dial can exit the pocket Universe. The mechanism is a one-way lock. Once the person is teleported inside a dial, only they can choose their time, or manner, of exit.”

 _4.5 billion years_.

Clara blinked, trying to understand the implications of this design.

“Well. Ok. So not quite as straightforward then. Sure.” Clara was beginning to feel nervous herself. Her initial bravado had subsided into a more circumspect approach. She turned to Lady Me. “All we have to do is wait for the Doctor to come out then. Cannot be too long, right? Surely, if we know him, right now, he is resting on some beach in his made up Universe, thinking about a way to brew up some trouble, right?”

No one replied. Clara looked around and saw a majority of the occupants of the room had their heads bowed, as if in … shame, she realized with a surprise. _Why did they go through with it if they were so ashamed of what they did to him?_

Well, she thought, if I cannot rescue him, might as well see what he was up to.

“General,” she addressed her only conceivable ally in the room, “is it possible to watch, monitor, the Dial?” The general nodded his assent. “Well, then, go ahead. Show me.”

“We can certainly do that, Miss Oswald. But we need something of yours to go ahead.”

“What more can you possibly need from me, now that I am dead?” she asked.

The General replied, “We need _your_ TARDIS.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It made sense to me that only the Doctor could imagine/create a world out of his nightmares, and that in his own funny way, it would be a perfect send off that he would give to himself. Rassilon and the High Council simply used this idea to trap him in his own Confession Dial. As this is not an AU story, I want to stay as close to the canon as possible, and try to give a different perspective on the events.
> 
> I truly appreciate the kudos and the comments! Thank you all :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we get an answer to a very old question :)

“My TARDIS? You have some nerve General. Asking me to hand over my TARDIS to you, without any assurance of safety for my companion. Or for myself, for that matter.”

“He is not asking you to hand over the keys you little girl, he simply wants to borrow it for sometime.” A new voice boomed in from the entrance. Clara looked towards the source, angry at being referred to as a little girl. She did recognize the voice though, and as the speaker came forward towards the main table, she also observed that this time, Ohila was not alone. A retinue comprising of several higher members of her Sisterhood soon followed her.

Something about this woman had unnerved Clara from the beginning. She had never felt comfortable around the Sisterhood, but had accepted them as a part of the Doctor’s life. Ohila had a stern demeanor, and she was a source of constant annoyance to the Doctor, but Clara knew that she cared deeply for him as much as any friend of the Doctor’s could. Ohila stopped a couple of feet away from Clara, and gave her a fond smile.

“The TARDIS possesses the key elements that will make the connection into the dial easier. Since you are the one closest to the Doctor, it will have to be the telepathic circuits from your TARDIS that can make this connection the strongest.”

“Then we just have to find out where is it that they are keeping him, don’t we?” Clara was growing impatient with every moment. The faster she could get the Doctor out of the dial, the better it would be for everybody. Well, not _everybody_ , due to possibility of the Universe imploding and all that, but that could not be helped. She turned her attention to the General once again. “Where is the dial?”

“We thought it best to keep it away from the city. We never know how he may react to his … detainment. To minimize civilian casualties, the dial has been sent away to the Outlands near Mount Cadon. We should reach there in five days.”

“What?” Clara nearly exploded with anger. “Five days on foot?”

“No, Miss Oswald. With flight.” The General had the decency to be embarrassed by his answer.

“No. Yes. You lot.” Clara declared to the entire High Council. “Forget it. We will find a way.” Lady Me gave her a slight nod. Clara noticed that Ohila was still looking at her with a mixture of fondness and … pride? It was puzzling. All Clara wanted was to keep away from the Sisterhood as much as she could. She knew that most of the magic and technology of the world was ineffective in their presence. Who knew what effect they would have on her?

However, she also observed that she could not proceed out of the chamber without passing Ohila, so it was inevitable that they would speak to each other.

She came face to face with the older woman, and they spent a few silent moments looking straight at each other – Clara with a question, Ohila with a smile. Clara realized what the older woman wanted, and Ohila’s smile blossomed into a most wonderful chuckle.

“I am guessing you want to come too, don’t you?” she asked Ohila, who now burst out laughing.

“She was not wrong, you know.” Clara thought she was talking to her, but Ohila raised her face to address the entire room, and continued speaking as she turned around on the spot. “She gave up a regeneration to make them meet, and she succeeded beyond what she could have ever imagined. The only question remains, which came first, chicken or the egg? The prophecy or the Hybrid? Come, girl – we have work to do.” The last part was obviously addressed to Clara.

As the three of them walked out of the chamber Clara could not shake off the feeling that Ohila knew something that the rest of them did not.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“There, just put your hands in and think about the Doctor.” Lady Me instructed Clara as she tweaked the console controls in the Diner. Clara was standing with her hands just over the telepathic circuits, nervous.

“Don’t think. We have used these circuits a million times before. Nothing will go wrong.” Lady Me turned to Ohila. “Will it?”

“You will need this.” Ohila produced a sharp metallic object from her robes. Clara took it in her hand and gave it a turnover. It had Gallifreyan writing over it. The TARDIS translation circuits translated the words into English for Clara and Me to read. The new text simply said “Doctor.”

“When he visited me on Karn, right before he went to meet Davros, he also gave me this. This is the Key to the Confession Dial. In the hands of the _right_ person, it can provide access to the Dial.”

“Why did you not give it to me when we were with the High Council?” Clara asked her.

“My little girl, do you think the Doctor would trust anyone else with the Key? He gave Missy the Dial because he knew she was the only one dangerous and powerful enough to shake the Universe up to reach him, and he left the key with me. For you,” said the older woman with a mischievous smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

Clara took the key in her left hand and inserted both of the hands into the mushy substrate of the telepathic circuits. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on the Doctor. Her best friend, her Love (yes, but he did not know yet. Not until the Cloisters.). She formed images of their adventures, their time together in her mind, forcing the telepathic circuits to overflow with just his image and nothing else. Her breathing slowed, she felt her entire body relaxing, and gradually, deliberately, the million images rushing around in her mind coalesced into one, like pieces of a mosaic fitting together – _his_ face. Weathered, creased, topped with silver curls and eyebrows – _Dear gods, those eyebrows!_ – she smiled to herself.

Around her, the TARDIS came alive with a hum that they had never heard before. The hum increased in pitch gradually, progressing from a deep rumble to squeak and doubling back. The lights on the console and the walls started flickering, randomly at first, and then in a circular pattern than went around them in ever increasing frequency.

“Steady, old girl.” Lady Me held the parking brake in her hands and spoke to the TARDIS. The dance of sound and light continued on, and for the first time, Clara felt afraid to be in a TARDIS. She tried to pull her hands out but they would not budge. The TARDIS telepathic circuits were holding them fast. She felt another pair of hands at her wrists, and an older, wiser voice at her ears.

“Don’t worry, little girl, she will never hurt you. Both of you.”

Clara relaxed a bit and felt the TARDIS do so too. The circle of lights came to a gradual stop and Clara felt something light up inside the TARDIS. She heard Lady Me gasp, and felt Ohila remove her hands from hers.

“Mighty Odin!” Clara heard Lady Me whisper. She knew something important had occurred for the Immortal to invoke her Viking heritage.

She opened her eyes slowly, adjusting to the increased brightness in the TARDIS. When she could finally focus her eyes on the TARDIS interior, she was shocked beyond words. She stood there, her hands buried inside the console, staring silently at the images surrounding her, with just one thought in her mind.

“Doctor,” she finally managed to whisper. “My Doctor!”

Lady Me was smiling in wonder at each image on the wall, and Ohila was looking at Clara, with an expression of smug confirmation. Around them, in each of the “round things” was an image of a castle, with an impossible number of levels, standing by itself in a never-ending ocean. As this image stabilized, each round window zoomed to a specific location inside the castle that offered them a glimpse of a corridor, or a room, or a window in this castle like an array of CCTV monitors.

“Well, that answers an age-old question!” exclaimed Lady Me. Clara smiled and began to laugh in response, when she caught an image on the monitor to her left.

It was the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, stepping out of the teleporter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day One in the Confession Dial.  
> (Some graphic depiction of violence!)

He looked different, her Doctor. Not his usual troublesome smile, his fidgeting with something, anything really. He looked purposeful, his unblinking eyes taking in the unfamiliar room. Something stirred in the room, and the Doctor looked down at the sand at his feet. He picked up a handful and let it run through his hands.

_If you think because she’s dead I’m weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part of killing her, and you’re not afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So for your own sake, understand this: I am the Doctor. I’m coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop._

Clara was shocked by his words – so he had ignored her direct order (not that she minded that, she was secretly happy that the Doctor was going to raise hell for the Time Lords), but it was his tone that worried her. This was not the Doctor, not _her_ Doctor, she realized as she looked into his eyes. _This_ was the man who had won the Time War – and this time, he was bringing the war home!

She looked around in the other windows to get an idea of where the Doctor could be, but there was nothing in the countless images that gave any indication of what sort of place this was. Her first thoughts went to his safety. She checked rapidly through the other windows to verify if there was anyone else in the castle. The Doctor was alone. She noted that the rooms were sparse, almost contradicting the grandeur expected in a castle. There were also long corridors that connected the rooms. It made sense; his idea of accepting death would probably involve a lot of running around, making the most of his limited time.

_“Run like hell, because you always need to.”_

That was what he had said, in the end.

She was so fixated on the Doctor that she almost missed a movement at the corner of her eyes on the left. She felt, rather than saw, a shadow move through one of the windows. It moved a bit too quickly for her to check who or what it was, but she was certain there was someone else in the castle than her Doctor.

She turned around to Me and Ohila, and saw that they too were chasing the anonymous shadow across the multiple windows.

“Did you see it too?” she asked them.

“It? Did not look like anything, just … a shadow of sorts?” Lady Me replied, continually scanning the windows.

“There!” It was Ohila who spotted it. She pointed to one of the windows in the top row. “There it is.”

The thing was tall, very tall – almost as tall as the Fisher King, Clara thought – and it moved in an ungainly fashion, a lumbering gait that looked more painful than it ought to be. Clara could not make out any features to identify its species or origin because it was covered from head to toe in dusty, worn out rags. There was something else strange about it too – it had a couple of flies buzzing around it, like planets in a constant orbit around a moving star.

 _Why would something like that be here?_ Clara wondered. It seemed out of place, the odd thing in this medieval castle ( _What was it with him and medieval times? He literally went there the last time he wanted to die!_ ) That thing had covered up its face, but she had seen enough life-forms in her lifetime to realize that this thing was not a benign entity. It exuded a hostile demeanor in the way it moved, in the way that the flies constantly buzzed around it. The thing lifted an arm to open a door and Clara almost let out a cry – its hands were among the most hideous she had ever seen. They were gray, scaly, and on the verge of turning to dust.

She was now pretty sure that this thing, whatever it was, was no friend to the Doctor. _Just like him,_ she shook her head in resignation. _Just like him to find peace in a haunted house._

In spite of the situation, she found herself giggling.

Lady Me and Ohila turned to look at her as if she had committed a grave social faux pas.

“What,” she aked them, puzzled by their reaction. “Knowing him,” she pointed to the screen with the Doctor with her eyes. “Knowing him, this is some harmless _haunted house_ thingy he probably wanted to create since he was a child. Very sure this is his idea of keeping the years from turning boring. Four and a half billion years is a very long time, and we are what, a day into it? Lets face it, the Doctor would not last ten minutes, let alone a day in meditation.”

Lady Me’s face relaxed into a smile as she nodded to Clara. Ohila on the other hand, seemed to be very concerned by this new development.

“No,” Clara heard the older woman whisper. “It cannot be… Not here…” Ohila seemed to be talking to herself, in an almost whisper voice.

“What? What is it? Tell me! Tell me!” Clara urged her.

“The Veil.” Ohila turned towards both of them. “It is an ancient creature, a legend, an incomparable horror, in some parts of the Universe. Some believe the Doctor created it – he made the creature to defeat his worst enemy. Some say he made it from his nightmares! Some say it is a Time Lady, the Doctor’s mortal enemy! There are as many stories about this creature as there are planets that the Doctor has visited. But no matter where you go, everybody seems to agree on one particular thing – the mere touch from this creature is fatal. No one can escape it, no one can defeat it. Not even the Time Lords, not even the Doctor himself...”

Clara froze as she heard these words. _What had he gotten himself into now? Honestly, I turn away for a moment and he gets himself stuck in a pocket Universe with a creature from the worst nightmares!_

“Well,” she said out aloud. “Then we have our work cut out clearly. Reach the Doctor before the creature does, and rescue him from the Confession Dial.” She turned to Ohila, “You said this _key_ would allow access to the Confession Dial. We have a video feed coming in, but do you think we could communicate with the Doctor, somehow? I can try talking to him.”

Ohila looked at her with an expression that spelt defeat. She shook her head. “I am sorry, I don’t know. No one has attempted to do this before.”

“Then I better try fast.” Clara turned towards the microphone on the console and spoke into it. “Doctor, Doctor … this is Clara. Doctor… Answer me if you can hear me. Doctor! Doctor!”

She looked at the window in frustration as the Doctor ignored her completely. She tried raising her voice, shouting even, but to no effect. There was no way he heard anything she said. _Daft old man, how am I supposed to rescue you if you won’t hear me?_

So engrossed had she been in her efforts to talk to him, that she had completely forgotten about The Veil. She noticed that the creature was now coming very close to the Doctor. _That fool_ , she thought, _I have to warn him_!

She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized that the Doctor had no idea that this thing was coming at him. He was still busy examining the teleporter and was now tracing in the dust on a table adjoining the apparatus. He walked about the room, sniffing, picking up cables and looking into them. Finally, he reached the door of the room. He pressed a button on the wall and the door slid open. She watched in horror as the door opened to the Veil.

“Doctor! Doctor!! Run, Doctor, run!” She was now shouting at the top of her voice. The Doctor was caught unawares too. He took a step back, clearly surprised, and tried to get out of the creature’s way. But he was too late.

Clara watched as a long scaly hand emerged from the folds of the creature’s robes and it clutched the Doctor’s face as if plucking a fruit from a tree. There was the unmistakable sizzle of flesh catching fire, and the Doctor tried to move the hand away with his hands, but they too caught fire as they came in contact with the creature! Clara looked on, numb with fear, and screaming the Doctor’s name over and over again. She heard the Doctor scream, as she had never heard him before. _The pain, the pain_ , she realized, _the pain of his regeneration energy being used up too fast to be helpful_. The Doctor held onto the Veil’s hand as much as he could, until all that remained of his palms were charred bits of flesh loosely attached to his bones.

Clara was barely aware that she was screaming, trying to get her hands out of the telepathic circuits, in vain… She finally saw the Doctor’s body fall to ground, smoking from where his face had been, lifeless on the ground.

“No! No!!” she screamed, her voice hoarse, her eyes red with the tears that she never noticed coming, her hands sore from trying to disengage from the telepathic circuits. She sunk to the floor, her chest heaving from the effort, crying - her grief too powerful for words, simply whimpering – repeating his name over and over again…

_Doctor, my Doctor…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even for the Doctor, I think that navigating the Confession Dial and learning about it would be a gradual process, not something he would pick up on the first day itself. Also, this limitation provides Clara an incentive to find whatever means necessary to intervene. 
> 
> Let me know your reactions in the comments :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clara revisits Doctor's last conversation with her, and it helps her understand the current situation.

_Night, night after day_

_Black flowers blossom_

_Fearless on my breath…_

 

She opened her eyes after an eternity, to a red world, a coolness tracing the curve of her neck and back. She felt the slow trickle of blood dripping down from her right temple to her cheek, her neck, and then on to the floor. She must have hit her head to the console, but she could not remember when. Her chest was heaving, her lungs pushing out air by the mouthful, but devoid of any rhythmic evidence of the horrific experience she had been through.

 _Doctor, MY Doctor!_ Her thoughts seemed to be focused on that one name, that one point on a distant horizon. She stumbled momentarily as she tried to get up. Her hands were still locked into the telepathic circuits, and she could now see the abrasions around her wrists where she had tried to unsuccessfully get them loose. She stood up eventually, and dared to look at the screens in front of her.

The Doctor, or what remained of him, lay on the floor, twitching and fighting back desperately against his almost certain demise. A low sound, like the song of a whale, escaped from his lips at intervals, punctuated by a whimpering coming from inside the Diner. Clara looked around to find the source and found Lady Me crouched in a corner, holding her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth. Clara noticed that Lady Me’s eyes were bloodshot too. It seemed that she too had emptied herself through her tears. Her entire body was shaking as she continued the whimpering.

 _The poor girl,_ Clara thought. _Now she realizes the consequences of what she has done. She thought she was playing a game, and what price have we all paid to play it!_ She scanned the room for Ohila, and found her sitting on a chair, completely immobile, as if carved from rock. Her eyes were dry, Clara noticed, but there seemed to be a shadow behind them. As if a sort of permanent darkness had now made them its home.

Both the women noticed Clara standing up in her previous position at the same time, and turned towards her. Lady Me shot forward from her position and had her arms around Clara in a blink.

“I am sorry. I am so, so sorry!” she kept saying, over and over again. “I am sorry Clara. I did not know they would do this. I did not know… _this_ …” She looked at the Doctor, and quickly turned away.

Clara felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked to her right to find Ohila beside her. The older woman had regained some of her composure and was looking at the screen with a renewed interest.

“Is he…? Is he…?” Clara could not bring herself to say it. _No, not after all this. It was not possible. He was supposed to be here for a long time, and then come out._ A confinement and release, that is what she thought it would be. Not the torture that she had just witnessed.

“Not quite.” Ohila answered. “His regeneration energy is still trying to create a new him. He may live, but he shall never be whole again.” Clara detected a crack in the older woman’s voice. _So, she was fond of the Doctor after all_.

“Is there nothing we can do? Nothing we can help from here?”

“A Confession Dial is a pocket Universe, Clara. It is purposely insulated from any external influence…”

“Then how can we see him?” Clara interrupted.

“Ah… that is strange. The only connection we have with the Dial is the key that you are holding in your hands. Only the owner of the Dial has the privilege to access the key, but we have demonstrated that you, Clara Oswald, have either been granted the privilege, or have managed to bypass the security to make the connection…”

“Or,” there was a third voice in the conversation now. Lady Me was still seated on the floor in the corner, but she was looking directly at Clara. “Remember what he said, when you last saw him. Remember what he was so sorry about.”

“The Hybrid,” Clara managed to whisper. “The most powerful creature in the Universe. A creature bred from two powerful races. He said he became the Hybrid, how?” She turned to Ohila, “How?”

Ohila appeared confused by this conversation, so Clara turned to her companion.

“Or not.” Lady Me answered. “What if the Hybrid is not one body, but … two bodies? Two physical bodies, but one… soul? What if the Doctor is not the _only_ one who is a Hybrid? What if the Dial recognizes a connection that is not just physical? If a person could exist in both Universes simultaneously, although in parts, the parts could still communicate, no matter the distance! What if the Doctor never needed to become the Hybrid, what if he always was… a part of the two parts?”

Clara saw that Ohila was sporting a weak smile, color returning to her visage slowly. “Show me!” she clutched the key in her hands more tightly as she spoke.

Ohila looked once into the display window, then to the telepathic circuits and back to Clara. She put her hands on Clara’s once again, and spoke softly.

“You tried shouting his name, but it did not work.” She looked down at the console. “It is called _telepathic circuit_ for a reason, little girl! Focus your thoughts to him. Reach him, reach him as if it is the only thing in the Universe that you could want right now…”

Clara shut her eyes and directed all of her thoughts to the image of her Doctor, lying on the floor. She found it difficult, especially with his low moaning growing even more desperate. _Think, Clara Oswald, think!_ she admonished herself. _Let go of your fear, let go of everything that holds you back. You only have your Universe to lose! Do not lose him, not again!_

She focused on his mental image until everything around her blurred into a thin nothingness. The sounds seemed to come from a far off distance, and she felt as if she was not in the Diner, but under the stars, maybe having another spacewalk. The entire Universe rushed by until all that remained were him and she… Two parts of the whole… The Hybrid…

 _Get up! Get up off your arse! Beat it! Beat it Doctor, beat it!_ she repeated, with more force every subsequent time.

After the twelfth time she had repeated her words, she felt him moving. Not the involuntary twitching of a dying Time Lord, but a purposeful, directed motion. She opened her eyes and saw that he was trying to get up. His stub of hands were making it difficult for him to grab something, so he put his entire weight upon them and tried to stand. The effort multiplied the pain, and Clara felt her heart jump up with horror.

She saw the Doctor rise up and stand, shakily. He looked around the room, as if working out the solution. Clara watched, spellbound, as he shuffled across the room to the teleporter, studying it, looking for a way to get out. She could not tear her eyes off the window, and her mind was now a still chamber, with not a single thought bouncing off its walls.

She was startled when the silence in her mind was finally broken by his voice – _Rule number one about dying, don’t. Ask me… ask me, Clara! Ask me how I beat this thing!_

_Black flowers blossom_

_Fearless on my breath…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks a lot for your wonderful comments and kudos! I hope you like where the story is going :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn something old and something new about the Hybrid!

He had figured out that the control room reset itself on the first day itself. By day 5, he was learning how to navigate the corridors without running into The Veil. Yesterday, on day 7, he had opened the door that led nowhere.

He was at it again, today, pleading the door to let him through, when it responded with a click of the lock.

 _See Clara, I’ve still got it._ She heard his voice in the Diner.

“How is he doing that?” she had asked Ohila the first time she had heard him respond. “Does he know we are here?”

“I don’t think so Clara… We may be able to access the Confession Dial, but the Doctor does not have any means of contacting us. The telepathic circuits are just reading his thoughts to us …”

“Like, hacking, you mean?”

“Yes, I suppose you can call it that.”

“So he is talking to me in his head? Although I am … dead and gone?”

Ohila looked at Clara and smiled. She smiled with such tenderness that Clara was visibly surprised. “Do you think you could ever not be there, for him? Do you think that the Doctor would ever, not feel your presence by his side, no matter where he is?” She moved her hand to cup Clara’s face, and the gesture made her eyes well up. “You are One,” Ohila continued, “You have always been one, and shall always be.”

Ohila sighed as she turned away from Clara and sat down on one of the chairs again. “They always get it wrong, you know. Big, fat egos prevent them from seeing what is right there, in front of their eyes.” She remarked as she settled in, arranging her robes to be in a comfortable position.

“Time Lords?” Lady Me asked.

“No, my dear, men.” Ohila turned towards her now. “Do you know that they also got the prophecy wrong?”

“What? How is that possible?”

“The Cloister Matrix prophesized many things about the Hybrid, but it also assigned a likelihood to each one. None of them, except one, was a certainty – a 100% chance of happening.”

“Which one?”

“That the Hybrid will stand in the ruins of Gallifrey.” Ohila sighed once more. “But they never bothered to ask.”

“Ask what?”

“What will the Hybrid do standing in the ruins? Laugh, at the destruction? Cry over it? Gloat, because it brought about the ruin of Gallifrey? Or help rebuild Gallifrey from its ruins? Everyone assumed that the Hybrid would be the cause of the destruction, and that the Doctor would know something about it – because the wraiths had whispered something into his ears as a child.” She added, smiling fondly, “And also, because he is the most troublesome rascal this planet has ever seen.”

Clara and Lady Me looked at each other and smiled too. It was true – he was the busiest troublemaker that they had ever encountered.

“But the one thing they did not account for, that nobody could account for, was you – Clara Oswald. Born on a faraway planet, in a faraway future. The girl who lived, and died countless times - for him. The Impossible Girl, _his_ Impossible Girl! The other part of the Hybrid…The girl who was born to save the Doctor.”

“Good job I am doing of that.” Clara replied in muted whisper, looking back at the screen where the Doctor was running out of corridors.

Ohila chuckled, “There is a world of difference between rescuing someone, and saving them, little girl. You were born to _save_ him,” Ohila pointed to the Doctor with her eyebrows. “And sometimes, difficult and annoying though it may be, you may also need to save him from himself… Not just rescue him from others. You are his strength, his life, his conscience, his … Love. You have saved other versions of him, through all of Time and Space – it is time you save this one too!” She added with a sly twinkle in her eyes, “The one that you love, unconditionally and completely! So go on then, Clara Oswald, save your Doctor.”

The Diner was silent for a few moments as the gravity of Ohila’s words sinked in. Clara mouthed a silent “Thank You” to the older woman, and turned back to the screen. In the corner, Lady Me was beaming back at her. She gave Clara a little nod, which Clara responded in kind, and turned to the console.

The Veil was closing in on the Doctor for the second time, and the Doctor was running out of ideas to outwit it. He kept asking the Clara in his head a way to get out of this one. Clara, in the Diner, was thinking furiously. She was no longer afraid of the Doctor dying, terrible and horrific though each instance had been. She knew that even death could not keep him from coming back to the teleporter. She just had to guide him so that he did not venture too far out.

“It’s called a Confession Dial, right?” she asked her two companions. “Why? Why not a Meditation Chamber? Or some Tranquility thingamajig?”

“Because a confession is important here?” Lady Me provided a hesitant answer.

“But how? Why would a confession be important at the time of a death?”

“Because a confession, especially upon an impending death, is the most truthful we can ever be to ourselves.” Ohila answered, calmly. “When there is nothing left to desire, to want, to have – then, the only thing remaining is us – what we are, what we always were. And our confessions are a way to come face to face with the one that we were hiding away, deep inside ourselves, all of our lives…”

“Oh, he is not going to like this…” Clara said under he breath, shaking her head.

_Rule number one, The Doctor lies!_

“Tell no lies!” she focused her thoughts on this one statement and willed it across the telepathic circuits. Hopefully he heard her, the connection was not the most stable. The Veil was advancing towards the Doctor in its slow lumbering gait, its arrival heralded by the faint buzzing of flies. The Doctor had his back to the wall, and he realized that there was no other way for him to escape.

_I can’t actually see a way out of this. I’ve finally run out of corridor. There’s a life summed up._

“Doctor, Tell. No. Lies!” Clara sent one furious thought away.

 _Now this is new._ The Doctor seemed to have picked up a stray thought. _I’m scared. I just realized that. I’m actually scared of dying._

Inches away from the Doctor’s face, The Veil stopped. Not just stopped, but it also appeared to be frozen, along with its companion flies. Four pairs of eyes widened in surprise as the discovery of a way to stop the Doctor’s mortal nemesis registered itself.

 _They had found a way_ , Clara thought with joy. _They had finally found a way to make that thing stop._

But although the death threat had been neutralized for now, they still faced another vexing conundrum – The Doctor had nowhere to go. His way across the corridor was blocked by The Veil, and on his other side was a thick wall of brick and mortar. But just as they were about to give up, the castle provided a way out by itself.

With a thundering noise of stone grinding on stone, the entire castle began to rotate, like oversized levers of a lock, level by level. The Doctor watched in surprise as the various corridors, windows, doors realigned themselves as the entire contraption came to a halt.

The Doctor opened the new door that had come to a stop before him, and was surprised that it opened into a room. Taking in a deep breath, the Doctor stepped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clara Oswald was born to save the Doctor - and I believe that required her saving him from himself too!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few more questions are answered!

_Tick-tock, tick-tock…_

He held a steady rhythm, tapping the armrest of his chair with his index finger, in an unceasing, unwavering motion. He was measuring Time. In the absence of any clock or a machine whatsoever, he was using the oldest method known across the Universe to mark the passage of Time – the steady beat of his own hearts.

 The Veil, as he had named the terrifying creature, followed him everywhere, like a shadow that somehow seemed to have its own measure of space and time. He had deduced that it took the shadow about fifty-seven minutes to catch up to him – running from one end of the castle to another, or at least, the known extent of the castle.

 But it always ended in the same fashion. For over a few dozen times, the Veil had finally caught up to the Doctor in the room, and that had always resulted in a reset to the teleporter chamber. The room was a dead end, literally.

 “We have to find a way out Clara, we really do!” Clara felt Lady Me walk up beside her. She felt her companion’s hand on her shoulder. “We cannot let him die in this room for four and a half billion years!”

 “That is the trick, Me. We know he escaped, but we do not know how.” Clara spoke softly. “We know he is thinking about it. We know he is desperate to get out. But somehow, it feels like he is missing something. We are missing something…”

 She looked back at the screen showing him seated on the chair, waiting for his death. But there was something different about him the past few times; his eyes had somehow become colder, removed from “the game,” as he had once called this exercise. It had been the portrait, her portrait. The shock of seeing her, not as his flesh-and-blood companion, but as a memory from long ago, hung on the wall had stirred up the many unresolved emotions within him. It reminded her of a poem she had taught in her World Literature class – something about the poet being a line on her lover’s canvas for eternity…

He kept staring at the painting as he counted down the hours, minutes, and seconds until The Veil arrived. Very rarely, his face softened as a memory bubbled up to the surface. Another memory, another crack on the canvas, another cut through his hearts…

Suddenly, as if prompted by some unseen hand, he stood up from the chair and surveyed the room. He picked up a flower from the vase, and sniffed it. _Nothing._ Then he began to pluck the petals from the flower and toss them around.

Clara smiled, she knew what he was doing. _Always work the surroundings,_ he had instructed her on numerous occasions. He went over to the lone window in the room and tried to open it, but was unsuccessful. It was bolted shut. She saw him scowl, as if he did not like what he could see from the window pane. He was restless, constantly moving along the length of the room, as if searching for something that he as yet did not know he was looking for. But she knew. Clara knew that he was trying to find a way out.

It was only a matter of time before he would do so. As the Veil entered the room, Clara saw the Doctor engage him in a conversation, for the first time. He had always run away, or at least tried to, in their previous encounters. But this time, he was speaking directly to his tormentor, taunting him.

Clara watched the exchange from afar, unable to tear her eyes away from the round window. It seemed like the Doctor was going to get cornered at the window, as before, and Clara resigned herself to another couple of days of the same tasks when, surprisingly, the Doctor picked up the chair and threw it across the window, shattering the pane into a million shards.

 _Because you won’t see this coming!_ He said as he jumped out of the window into the unknown abyss.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Quickly, Lady Me. We don’t have time!” Clara spoke to her companion with an urgency that bordered on panic. After all this time, all the efforts, the last thing she wanted was for the Doctor to meet a natural end, and worse, regenerate into a new Time Lord. Clara had realized pretty early that she had to ensure that the Doctor would not fall prey to any of the traps in the castle. If the Doctor had to die, he had to die properly – so as to ensure that he could return to the teleporter room without any interference from the Veil.

The creature seemed to be quite primitive in its intelligence. Once it thought the Doctor was beyond regeneration, it would vanish into thin air, reemerging at the same spot the moment the Doctor turned on the teleporter for the last time. For this scheme to work, for the Doctor to be born again, he had to die properly.

And here he was, spoiling her plans as usual. The Doctor had fallen from the window directly into the sea, and the water was icy cold. The initial shock had rendered him unconscious, and it had taken several attempts by Clara to get his attention and awaken him. However, that was a much easier problem than the one they were dealing with now.

The Doctor was cold, shivering, possibly coming down with hypothermia, with no help in sight. He had walked into a room with a fire burning, but there was nothing else that he could use to keep warm. His tormentors had not anticipated his escape from the room in this fashion, and since the rooms reset to their original state, nothing new could be added to them.

 _That is not quite right,_ Clara thought. She could add a thought, an emotion, hacking her way through the neurological connection circuits in the castle. Lady Me was already working out another way to communicate with the Doctor when Clara remembered something from their visit to the Church of the Papal Mainframe.

“A perception filter! That is what we need!” she was visibly excited as she explained her idea to Lady Me and Ohila. “We need to hack into the Doctor’s thoughts, and make him believe that there is another set of clothes in the room. A dry set of clothes to change into.”

“And how might that help us? Will it not kill him faster?” Ohila asked her.

“It might, but it might also not. We do not know. Plus, if he will come back here… later…,” she was not yet used to the idea of his dying and resetting as the eventual result. “Then he will find these clothes, the ones he is wearing now, dried and waiting for him, right?”

“So what you are saying is – we sacrifice this version of him, to keep the later versions warm and safe?”

“Well, he did turn up with the same coat on Trap Street, did he not?”

Lady Me raised her eyebrows and tilted her head towards Ohila. Clara understood. Those events had not yet occurred for Ohila, so it would be best if she did not give away any spoilers.

“I will start working on the filter.” Lady Me went back to her console.

“Don’t you worry about me, little girl.” Ohila moved closer to Clara. “You may have something of his that will prove useful.” She gestured to the device that the Doctor had used to wipe away his memories of Clara.

“Are you sure?” Clara was worried that the device may do more damage than just remove traces of the past few weeks.

“I belong to the Sisterhood of Karn, little girl! The past, present and future are all the same to me. This,” she motioned to the device, “is just an insurance, for your safety.”

“Ok then, go ahead and do it. My hands, as you can see, are quite tied.”

Ohila picked up the device, turned it around in her hands, and then began to walk towards the door.

“Wait!” Lady Me called out after her. “Where are you going? And the device?”

Ohila continued walking until she reached the door to the seating area of the diner. She opened the door and then looked back to her two friends before speaking.

“You don’t expect me to do it in here, do you?” She hefted the device in her right hand, and added, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “After all, whom do you think your Doctor will steal it from in the first place?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay - was out on vacation for a couple of weeks. Back to school now and we are coming to the close. The poem referred to in this chapter is a beautiful poem by poet Amrita Pritam (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-will-meet-you-yet-again/). Hope you like it!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confession...

_Water is my eye_

_Most faithful mirror_

_Fearless on my breath…_

 

He had finally found it – Room number 12. It had taken a while, almost a couple of years, but he had found it in the end. Day after day, he had covered an extra length of a corridor or two, moving ever closer to his goal. Day after day, his tormentor kept coming. Never stopping, and always a step behind him, its breath warm on his neck.

_It keeps coming Clara. Wherever I go, it follows. Why? Why does it do that?_

In the Diner, Clara and Lady Me heard his thoughts loud and clear. Clara looked up to the screen in alarm – this was the first time she had heard the slightest sliver of doubt creep into his thoughts. His thoughts seemed a tad bit heavier, as if the combined fatigue of his previous efforts was slowly making its presence felt.

“How is this possible?” She asked Lady Me. “He should not be able to remember the previous days, should he?”

“A closed energy loop…” Lady Me whispered. “What did he say this castle was – a closed-energy loop. Nothing comes in, and nothing gets out – not unless they have the key, like you have. And even then, this is only possible on a telepathic level.”

“What do you mean?” Clara asked.

“Maybe only intangibles, like thoughts can flow through this Universe. We can hack into the Doctor’s thoughts, create perception filters, and transmit thoughts from our side. But we cannot exchange any physical objects. The pocket universe of the Dial acts as an insulation from the external world.”

“Like…a capacitor?” Clara added, hesitantly.

“Exactly!” Lady Me exclaimed. “You are learning!” she added. “But capacitors are notorious for one thing – charge leakage. Now imagine if the closed-energy loop of the Dial leaks the energy like a capacitor, except, the leakage is not actual energy, but telepathic – made of thoughts.”

“So, what you are saying is – the memories of previous days, the thoughts – his thoughts, our thoughts – can find their way into the universe and stay there?”

“Yes, that may be so. The charge leakage in a capacitor is the highest near the plate – the interface of the capacitor with the external circuit. Maybe room number 12 is one such point of exit? That would mean that residual thoughts, as well as memories, might be more concentrated in that area… It may be possible that he could well remember everything, eventually, as enough thoughts accumulate.”

Lady Me stepped forward and placed her hands on Clara’s.

“Clara, we have to be very careful here…” her voice was a tad softer, but laced with an edge of worry. “Imagine when he finds out that he has been here for a long time, dying and getting back again. Death is traumatic enough when you experience it once, imagine how traumatic it would be to someone who has endured it over and over…”

Lady Me’s voice trailed off with the last sentence. Clara fell silent, unable to add anything now that she realized how hard the future days could be. Ohila had been right – saving someone was a much more difficult task than simply rescuing them.

She felt her eyes well up, thinking about the trauma that he went through each time The Veil caught up to him. The pain of the flesh burning with such intensity that even his regeneration energy could not keep up with it; the agony of experiencing every cell in his body desperately trying to heal; the unendurable torment of trying to reach the teleporter before his time ran out – Clara could not even imagine what would happen to him when he realized what he had endured.

 _No matter what_ , she thought, _I will be here for him. Always here, always close. I will not lose him, not now, not ever…_

But it would be over soon, she knew. He had found the room number 12, so the end must be in sight. Did the castle not prompt him towards it incessantly? Surely that meant that there was a way to escape the castle from that room. Surely there was.

Clara looked up at the round window once again. The Doctor was looking at the stars, trying to gauge his position as usual. But he seemed worried. He had the skull from the teleporter room in his hands, and was standing perilously close to the edge of the parapet. He kept looking up at the stars, clearly trying to read something, but seemed confused by what he read back.

_Who’s been playing about with the stars, Clara? They are all in the wrong places. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’ve travelled 3 years into the future. But I do know better. So who moved the stars?_

Clara looked at Lady Me in alarm. The Doctor was remembering Time, he was remembering when he had arrived here. Maybe the leakage was happening much faster than they estimated. They needed to act fast, the Doctor needed to act fast, if he wanted to get into the room where his destination lay.

As if on cue, the lumbering form of The Veil appeared behind the Doctor, extending its hideous fingers towards its prey as before. It stepped slowly, deliberately, as if already aware that it was going to win this round too. But just as it was about to touch the Doctor, the Doctor spoke. Softly, yet with intent.

_I confess, I know the Hybrid is real. I know where it is and what it is. I confess, I’m afraid._

The Veil froze. The castle shuddered as it had many times before, but this time, the Doctor was prepared. As he turned around though, the skull fell into the icy sea below, joining the legions of its fallen comrades who had come this same way previously.

Clara was stunned to hear the Doctor’s words. It could not be. How did he realize this? When did he work it out? There was not a single moment during his time in the Dial that she had missed, so it was inconceivable that he had arrived at this revelation during his time here. _Unless… unless_ , she realized herself, _he knew. He always knew._

“He knew… he always knew…” she whispered, almost to herself. The full magnitude of his suffering hit her like a ton of bricks. “He knew, Me. He knew...” she whispered to her companion, a lone tear making its way from her left eye to her cheek.

_Teardrop on the fire_

_Of a confession_

_Fearless on my breath,_

_Most faithful mirror_

_Fearless on my breath…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rule number one: The Doctor lies...
> 
> Thank you for the wonderful kudos and comments :)   
> Would appreciate more comments about the current chapters too :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Hell-bent, in the Diner.

Clara could not stop the tears. She was kneeling on the floor, her hands supporting her from falling over, her chest a hollow chamber of exhaustion. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she wished she could stop crying, but she knew she could not. She felt as if every tear that flowed down her cheeks and dropped in a puddle on the floor underneath was one more debt that the Universe owed her.

She had assumed the worst to be over when he was finally able to enter room number 12. Lady Me had been visibly excited to believe that they had successfully minimized the Doctor’s time in the Confession Dial. But how wrong they were, she thought. All the trials leading to the room had been merely a glimpse, an appetizer, of the true ordeal that lay ahead. All the traps that the castle had laid were but a minor obstacle to the cruel joke that someone was playing on the Doctor.

Now that the Doctor was free, she was going to make sure there was hell to pay for Rassilon and his cronies. The Doctor had had his shot at revenge, and he had come so close to destroying the world he loved. _Or at least that is what everybody thought_ , she said to herself. She recalled her conversation with Ohila, and wondered if everyone, including her Doctor, was simply looking in the wrong direction all this time.

What if the Hybrid was not a monster, but something else altogether? She knew the Doctor hated being called a ‘hero,’ and she was herself not sure if that could be said of her too, but maybe together – Clara and her Doctor – were something more than themselves individually. Something better, something … good?

_Clara, be my pal. Tell me, am I a good man?_

She had not known then, for she was not yet used to his new face. But today, she could answer this question as no one else could. He was not a hero, yet he had endured a seemingly unending torment rather than betray her. He was not a warrior, yet he had fought successfully against the forces trying to control him, for four-and-half billion years. He was also not an idiot (though he would be the first to disagree on this point), for he let mercy and compassion drive his actions, knowing well the cost that he bore for this act. He was, she concluded simply, what he chose to be – a Doctor, a healer. And how could the Hybrid born of such a person ever be something monstrous?

_You will make a good Dalek, Doctor!_

He had hatred in his heart, yes. He hated the Daleks, the sworn enemies of the Time Lords, the destroyers of millions of lives on his world. He hated them enough to want to annihilate them. But he hated the Daleks for what they did, not for who they were. He hated Davros who was the creator of the Daleks, but he also saved Davros, a scared child on a battlefield. His compassion was rewarded in the end with mercy.

_A friend inside an enemy, an enemy inside a friend. Everyone’s a hybrid._

But they were not, not the way Clara and her Doctor were. Missy was wrong in the end, just as she was right too! They weren’t just a hybrid, a combination put together from different races, like a two-colored clay that did not mix; they were One, always one, always together. So what if she did not have a heartbeat, he had enough hearts for both of them.

She realized that they were not just pals, friends, teammates – they belonged together. Like the two faces of the Janus, they were each other’s past, present and the future. She realized that she could not answer his question without asking it of herself. Was she a good woman?

She felt a hand on her shoulders and heard Lady Me call out her name.

“Clara? Clara?” the voice was soft but insistent. “They are here.”

Clara stood up and brushed her eyes with the sleeves of her sweater. She picked herself up and carefully analyzed her future course of actions. He was safe, so she had no concerns with the Time Lords anymore. As for her own TARDIS, she felt it was necessary for her story to draw to a close too. But she would not surrender to that bunch of snobbish idiots. She would first make then realize the harm that they had done to her, to her Doctor, before she let them go.

She turned around to face the door to the console room and gave Lady Me a nod. Lady Me opened the door and let the waiting party in. They came in one by one and stood by the door, in a circular formation. Leading the procession was Ohila who was now positively beaming. Clara noticed that the older woman had also been crying, and although her eyes were just as bloodshot, she had stopped crying a while ago. Clara gave her a slight nod of recognition, upon which Ohila beamed a smile right back at her. Following Ohila were a few members of the High Council, their heads hung down, and a tall, dark woman she did not recognize. Her imposing presence lent gravitas to an already somber gathering, and when she spoke, it was in a manner that expected obedience.

“He is … gone. He stole another TARDIS from the cloisters and went away with … you?” The last portion was more a question than a statement of fact. Clara noticed that the woman was wearing a general’s breastplate. The gears in her mind slowly clicked into place.

“Yeah. Me.” Clara replied as much as she could in her usual way. “Another version, at any rate. Had to stay out of sight. Universal paradox and the sort, you know. Sorry about the regeneration though. He can be a bit stubborn at times.”

“It is alright, Madam. We were wrong in our actions too. Lord President, your … Doctor … did what he thought was best at that time. Trust me, Madam, he did both of us a favor with this regeneration.”

“So I guess you shall be wanting this back then?” Clara motioned to her TARDIS. “Well, you have some nerve … Hang on? What did you just call me? Madam what?” Clara was clearly puzzled.

“Madam … President.” The general replied, emphasizing each word with care, as if she was actually afraid of Clara.

“What? How can I? I am not even a Time Lady! And I don’t know what you think goes on in a TARDIS, but the Police Box is most definitely not a snog box, I can assure you!”

“But you are One – you are the Hybrid, the most powerful being on both Gallifrey and Earth. Even these idiots realize that. You are Clara Oswald, Madam President of Gallifrey, one-half President anyways.” It was Ohila who spoke, and she was smiling at Clara once she was done.

It took Clara a few moments to collect her wits before replying. “So,” she hesitated. “What happens now?” She looked pointedly in Ohila’s direction.

“You know,” replied the older woman, fishing into her robes and pulling out a device that resembled the one the Doctor had used to wipe off his memory. “He may be the bravest Time Lord of them all, the Lord President of Gallifrey, but he is also an idiot like them.” She smiled as she handed it to Clara, who raised her eyebrows in a question.

“I made a few modifications to the one I took from you. He thinks he has forgotten you, but all I gave him was a concentrated dose of temporary amnesia. A few months, maybe a year or two, should restore his memories of you completely. This,” she pointed to the one held by Clara, “should reverse the process to a few hours. It is my own recipe, and I have used it numerous times on troublemakers like him. He would have come looking for you once the effects subsided, this will take you to him.”

“Although, Madam,” the General spoke, “we would rather offer you an official TARDIS befitting your station, we would be honored if you kept the Diner as your other home too.”

“And I intend to! And my first order as the President of Gallifrey is thus – I am hereby bestowing this TARDIS, to my companion Lady Me, and her descendants, from now till Eternity. It will be your responsibility, General, to see that she does not face any difficulties from the Time Lords during her travels. As for me,” Clara squeezed the memory wipe device a bit tighter in her right hand as she spoke, “there is but one home, but one TARDIS for me to stay, and that is where I shall leave.”

And with that, Clara walked away from the group, opened the door and stepped outside the Diner.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired from many sources. The main inspiration is the wonderful Heaven Sent video by ellymellyvids (https://youtu.be/K9rooLEHO08). Further inspiration comes from this excellent article on NPR : http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/02/16/466109612/was-einstein-wrong. 
> 
> Let me know how it feels in the comments! :)


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